Islamic Jihad is taking strides to restrain its members in the Gaza Strip from unauthorized attacks, suggesting that the group has quietly joined Hamas in enforcing a nearly 2-year ceasefire with Israel.
This became clear when, on Sunday morning, an Israeli drone killed two men widely believed to be current or former members of the Palestinian movement in northern Gaza; mysteriously, the group did not claim them as their own.
The Israeli military said the two were preparing to fire rockets into Israel.
The incident has placed Islamic Jihad in conflict with radical Salafist groups, adherents to a stark brand of Islam who are also staunchly opposed to any ceasefire with Israel.
The Salafists, while still marginal, draw some support from Palestinians outraged by Israel’s ongoing blockade, which has left Gaza's economy in ruins and the Strip’s 1.5 million inhabitants all but imprisoned.
Hamas announced a unilateral ceasefire at the end of Israel’s devastating 3-week offensive on the enclave in January 2009. Islamic Jihad, while not publicly endorsing the truce, has largely refrained from attacks.
Sunday's airstrike came at 4 a.m., next to a factory in the Sudaniyya area in northern Gaza, near the coast, about 1 kilometer from the border with Israel in an area strewn with the bombed-out skeletons of buildings, abandoned beachfront restaurants, apartment complexes, and an installation with a rusty sign reading, “Palestinian Authority Ministry of Youth and Sport.”
All that remained at the blast site by afternoon were damp stains on the ground wall of an apartment building, which onlookers said were blood and human tissue.
But instead of embracing the two as “martyrs” in the fight against Israel, Islamic Jihad issued a stern rebuke saying any member of the group that engages in “unauthorized” attacks would be disowned.
"The leadership has taken a crucial decision to disown all members who go out on impromptu missions or under the banner of other organizations, such as those who refer to themselves as salafists," an unnamed Islamic Jihad source told Agence France-Presse on Tuesday.
Spurned by Islamic Jihad, and unclaimed by any other faction, the families of the two men killed in the airstrike, meanwhile, denied news reports that the deceased were members of any armed group.
In interviews in Shati' refugee camp and neighboring Beach camp, relatives of Muhammad Zaqout and Mahmoud Jaber Wishah, both 21, said the two were friends who were merely out for some air when a missile from a drone struck them dead.
At both the mourning tents -- erected to receive friends, relatives and neighbors offering their condolences -- there were none of the flags of Palestinian factions usually found at such events. The "martyr posters" printed for both men were also bereft of the insignias of the factions or the Hamas-run government.
Zaqout's father was too stricken to give an interview, but Bassam Atiya Zaqout, the uncle of the deceased, explained how his nephew was still alive when medics retrieved him from the Sudaniyya area in northern Gaza. Surgeons at Ash-Shifa Hospital, he said, worked to repair shrapnel wounds in his back and the back of his head for hours.
"His back was open like a hole," Atiya said. "A lot of surgeons were working -- orthopedic surgeons, all the doctors -- they worked on him for four hours, and they told us 'He's okay, he's still breathing.'"
"They told us they would transfer him to Egypt or to Turkey," he said. "We agreed, and we ran to get a transfer permit; when we were in the office there, they told us he was dead. We were shocked." Muhammad's mother, he said, was in a state of shock in which she believed her son was not dead and was instead undergoing treatment in Turkey.
Zaqout explained that Muhammad had attended school until the 11th grade and after that worked in construction, when work was available. Since Israel's imposition of a blockade in 2006-07, such work has become vanishingly rare as construction materials remain unavailable.
Two of Muhammad's brothers and his father worked as police officers in the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority before it was deposed by Hamas, but the three still receive salaries from the Ramallah government.Asked about news reports that Muhammad was a member of the Islamic Jihad's armed wing, or any armed group, he said, "It's not true."
He said none of the Palestinian factions nor the Hamas authorities were assisting the family to pay the hefty costs of the mourning period and funeral. "No one is helping us. We're doing it ourselves," he said.
At the nearby tent for Wishah, another uncle described the deceased as a "calm and cool guy" who worked in a clothing factory, like his father, until those industries closed due to the blockade.
Asked whether Wishah was a member of the resistance, or a member of any faction, the uncle, who declined to identify himself, said he could "neither confirm nor deny" this.
A Palestinian source from the area, however, identified members of Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, the Al-Quds Brigades, as among those in attendance at both mourning tents.
Asked about this issue at a news conference on Wednesday, senior Islamic Jihad official Muhammad Al-Hindi said that the two men were not members of his group, and he suggested that another faction, presumably a Salafist group, should put an end to the speculation by claiming the two as their own.
“If people or movements don’t want to adopt their martyrs it’s their problem. Why transmit the problem to other movements?” he said.
Emad Eid, the director of Ma'an's office in Gaza City, suggested that one or both of the deceased men were former members of Islamic Jihad who recently left to join the Salafist movement.
“Islamic Jihad did not make an official announcement of a ceasefire,” Eid said. “But in actuality there is a ceasefire,” he added arguing that the group had reached an understanding on the matter with Hamas.
While Islamic Jihad and Hamas are close both ideologically and politically, tensions have surfaced between the groups in the past. As recently as April police arrested a group of Islamic Jihad members for four hours, reportedly over a planned attack on Israeli forces.
Islamic Jihad did, however, embrace the 6-month truce that preceded Israel’s December 2008 onslaught.
Now Islamic Jihad is siding with Hamas in its campaign against the Salafists, who are believed to be responsible for some of the homemade rockets frequently fired into Israel from Gaza. In August 2009, Hamas forces killed some 24 members of the Salafist group Jund Ansar Allah in a shootout in the city of Rafah.
Following Al-Hindi’s news conference, one of the principal Salafist groups, Jaysh Al-Umma (“Army of the Nation”) issued a statement lashing out at Islamic Jihad for not “adopting the martyrs” of Sunday’s attack.
“We, the Army of the Nation, the Sunnis and the community in Palestine, strongly condemn the declaration of the spokesman of those who call themselves ‘the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine’ who abandoned the mujahidin ("freedom fighters") after their martyrdom by the Zionist enemy and refuse their adoption as martyrs in their movement.”
The statement, emailed to journalists in Gaza, went on to condemn Islamic Jihad and Hamas, along sectarian lines, for accepting support from “the Persians, who are Shia,” a reference to Iran.
Officials say Gaza’s Hamas government remains committed to the ceasefire for now.
Ahmed Yousef, an official in the Hamas Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Ma'an that “We have said to the world [that] it’s much better for us so we can take care of the people who are suffering and also encouraging the investors and the world community who promised 4 billion dollars to fund the construction process here in Gaza.”
The strategy, he argued, is “not to give them [Israel] any excuse to justify their aggression by saying ‘Hamas is firing rockets.’”
Yousef added in an interview at his Gaza office: “We’re trying to cut through the line of justification that the Israelis are promoting through their propaganda machine, to always blame the victims … demonizing the Islamists and Hamas in particular and dehumanizing the Palestinians in general.”